


doom upon the world

by hawkwing_lb



Series: out of the silence and the shade [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-18
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-14 16:48:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5750740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawkwing_lb/pseuds/hawkwing_lb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Afterwards, Leliana will think that she had prepared for everything, except for this.</p><hr/><p>Or, how Leliana reacts in the hours after the destruction of the Conclave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Personal canon for context: This Leliana was (is) the lover of Warden-Commander Kallian Tabris. Alastair is King in Ferelden.

Afterwards, Leliana will think that she had prepared for everything, except for this.

She is discussing the Divine's plans with Josephine when it happens, in the tiny bare-walled room in Haven's chantry she managed to secure for _Ambassador_ _Montilyet's_ use. Justinia means to offer a reborn Inquisition as a solution to the conflicting grievances of mage and templar, convince all sides to submit themselves to an authority not shackled by the weight of the past or divided by the Chantry's factionalism, but there is much work to be done to make it a _practicable_ solution. (There are perhaps two people in Thedas whose leadership would have made a statement about the Inquisition's impartiality as well as its independence from the Chantry's control. With Sariel Hawke's disappearance and Kallian Tabris's _Avernus's research is bearing fruit, don't_ ask _this of me when there's even half a chance I can find a cure for the Calling, Leliana, please_ , it will be difficult to present the Inquisition as anything but Justinia's tool, but its usefulness will depend on its perceived independence, and so it vital they be able to do so.)

Her first warning is the noise. A thunderous roar, like the voice of an avalanche: it rattles the coals in their inadequate brazier and shakes mortar-dust from the stone walls. Josephine clutches at her papers, stares at Leliana wide-eyed across the table. "What was _that?_ "

There is a cold clutch around Leliana's heart -- it is a smaller, harder thing these days than it used to be, less easily chilled, but now it is _ice._ She is the Divine's Left Hand, and between her spies and the cadre of bodyguards whose training both she and Cassandra had overseen, Justinia is as well-guarded as any mortal woman might be. The Conclave is as _safe_ as any armistice meeting between warring factions might be, and there have only been the usual whispers for threats on the Divine's life, but Dorothea is _still mortal,_ and the Conclave still a very fragile effort.

That is, after all, why she and Cassandra are not at Justinia's side. If some disaster -- _Maker forbid,_ Justinia said, _but we must acknowledge the chance_ \-- overtook the Conclave, it would fall to them to keep the armed retinues camped below Haven from making the matter worse. It would fall to them to maintain a secure position for the Divine to fall back on.

_Or avenge her, if she cannot._

"Let us find out," Leliana says. The dread in her heart turns her voice icily hard. She must get to her scouts -- must find Cassandra -- must make sure that Cullen's troops are ready to react --

Must _know_ what has happened.

She knows it is bad before she even reaches the chantry door, knows from the tenor of voices raised in shock, the edge of panic breaking like a wave around her. Josephine's soft boots whisper on the stone in her wake. She expects --

She is not quite sure what she expects.

What she _sees_ throws her back to one of the worst days of her life.

Back to Denerim, in the last days of the Fifth Blight. In the wake of the archdemon's flight, the sky turned blackish-red, as though the heavens themselves were blighted. Sunlight distorted through a haze, all the colours gone wrong and twisted, the air heavy with the putrid stink of darkspawn on the march, almost as bad as the Deep Roads -- she can still taste it in her mouth when she remembers, along with the sour bile of constant fear.

It is only a moment before she realises this cannot be a blight. (The icy spring wind cuts through her cloak, and beside her Josephine is murmuring a prayer.) Between an archdemon's awakening and its rise, there are months of warning -- Kallian would have sent her word, _Alastair_ would have, even Oghren -- and _this_ sky is not red but green. Sick green, like veilfire, shot through with streaks of lightning: a maelstrom rising over the peak in whose shadow lies the Temple of the Ashes.

 _Maker preserve us._ The prayer does not make it to her lips. There is Cassandra, arriving at a run through the late-fallen snow, and here comes Torvin, chief among the scouts who answer first to the Nightingale, and she must _be_ the Nightingale now, the Left Hand, cold and analytic and wholly pragmatic. The Left Hand can afford none of Leliana's weaknesses. "Josie," she says -- she cannot look at the woman she has called _friend_ for the better part of a decade _,_ for her control is still far too thin to survive Josephine's warm heart -- "I do not know what has happened, but it is clearly bad. Will you send a servant for my armour, and then see what may be done to keep people calm?"

Josephine's muted acknowledgement clashes with Torvin's "I sent the ready squad up the Temple path to find out what's toward. By your leave, we'll ask the mages and templars left in Haven to surrender their weapons until we know more about what's going on."

With emotions running high and panic in the air, that might trigger a massacre. Leliana frowns disagreement. "By all means, make sure they're watched, but hold off on anything else until we have more information --"

"Leliana!" Cassandra has never dealt well with helplessness. Patience is not in her nature. Her face is flushed, her fist white-knuckled on the hilt of her sword. "Cullen is heading to the Valley of the Ashes with the first cohort. I will go with him: I can be of more use there than here. That" -- the jerk of her scarred jaw indicates the sky -- "is a breach in the Veil. I can feel it from here, and so will every templar and mage left alive within a dozen miles. Maker protect us, what have they _done?_ "

A breach in the Veil. Leliana nods, outwardly calm. "We should expect demons or the undead, then. Or both." She cannot help remembering another nightmare, a pair of them: a dark night filled with rotting corpses that would not fall and would not die and would not _stop_ until they were hacked apart and burned; a tower where demons crawled from walls thick with char and the smell of sulphur and blood. (She has seen too many of the worst horrors the world has to offer: if she lets herself think on it, it will etch the back of her teeth with acid bile.) "Go, Cassandra. Stay safe, if you can. I will see to matters here." And adds, as the other woman turns away: "Take Varric with you. He might be useful."

Cassandra's disgusted snort is the most ordinary thing in the world, and she tries not to be comforted by it.


	2. Chapter 2

_Matters_. Yes. She sees to them. Josephine prevents a riot, two murders, and half a score of duels, and convinces the Chantry personnel that the prayer vigils are _their_ idea. (She also distracts Chancellor Roderick, a service for which Leliana will thank her later: Leliana is rather better at patience than Cassandra, but Roderick's blustery self-importance tries even hers.) Leliana's people quietly arrest the three or four individuals in Haven but not at the Conclave who are most likely to have been involved in a plot of any kind. It makes Leliana feel a little better to take action, but she cannot fool herself into believing that this is anything more than locking the stable door with the horses long gone.

The sick spot in the sky is growing, slowly but surely. Information begins to trickle in, along with the first casualties: the sky might be the most visible problem, but apparently there are other rifts where the Fade is bleeding through to the waking world. Rifts spitting forth demons.

She orders troops out to guard the bridges, sets Cullen's half-trained recruits to standing watches on Haven's walls, and orders Torvin to trail the armed retinues who are withdrawing _rapidly_ from their camps below Haven. (Three junior enchanters and the mercenary company that had accompanied their seniors; a peg-legged Knight-Lieutenant and a collection of templars and templar-recruits; three Orlesian lordlings who had apparently come more to avoid military service under Celene than for any real actual _interest_ in the outcome.) A handful of templars put themselves at Josephine's disposal; a few grizzled captains and sergeants join their example, when it becomes clear the news from further up the valley is not good and likely to get worse: the Conclave played host to royal representatives from Ferelden and Orlais, Nevarra and Antiva, and the various lordly houses of the Free Marches sent their own observers...

Word comes, the certainty of a report from a returning scout. The Temple of the Sacred Ashes is laid waste. There is little prospect of survivors.

Leliana does not weep. There are demons falling from the sky and her weeping must wait, her grief must hold itself in abeyance. The Ashes are gone, that miracle of faith lost utterly, and _Dorothea is dead_ and she would curse the Maker, would spit her grief at the sky -- but the sky is _green_ and she must think clearly, calmly, with the precision of the Left Hand, so that _the right people will pay for it._

She has lost thirty agents, in the ruins of the Conclave, years of work in getting the right people in the right places gone in an instant. She must send messages to Val Royeaux, to Denerim and Cumberland, Ostwick and Montsimmard, Antiva and Kirkwall: must act as though she still has a _purpose_ , that her world has not crumbled around her.

Cassandra returns with the dusk, her left pauldron scored by claws and her eyes dark with weariness. Charcoal smudges her forehead, and the kohl she uses to line her eyes has run in streaks down one cheek. For all that, unharmed. "There is a survivor," she says without preamble, taking a seat on the bench where Leliana is eating an evening meal. She reaches for Leliana's untouched breadroll, breaks it in two. "An elf. They say she emerged from a rift and fell unconscious. Some of Cullen's men are bringing her in on a litter. I came ahead. She is unconscious still, and feverish, and there is something wrong with her hand -- it glows with the same light as the breach in the sky." She glares at the bread as though it were an enemy, bites and chews ferociously. Swallows. "If she is responsible for this _disaster_ \-- if she caused Justinia's death --"

"She will pay for it, Cassandra," Leliana says quietly, and covers the other woman's hand with her own. "She will."

Cassandra shakes her head, fierce. "It is _growing_. The breach in the sky. The valley is filling with demons. Our forces have set up a perimeter, and Cullen -- Maker, the man is tireless, with him out there we may yet manage to hold our ground -- Cullen is leading from the front. But if we cannot find a way to _close_ it..." In the torchlight, abruptly, she looks far older than her thirty-eight years, old and despairing and unutterably weary. "It could keep growing," she says, flat and tired. "It is like a hole in a dyke, Leliana: the Fade _presses_ on it, widens it. Unless there is some way of closing it, it might grow until it" -- she made a frustrated gesture -- "until it _swallows the world._ I do not know how we fight this, Leliana. And that frightens me."

If Leliana could allow herself the luxury of fear, it would frighten her, too. But she cannot allow herself to feel. "We will find a way," she says, and makes herself believe it.

"I could wish we had a mage of any knowledge still with us." Cassandra sighed. "My training as a Seeker of Truth was comprehensive, but this? I do not think we have time to send for Vivienne and her so-called loyalists in Val Royeaux -- even if I had any confidence she would come." She pushed herself up from the table. "I will consult with the Tranquil. Perhaps we may come up with some idea of what to do."

Perhaps is a slender reed.


	3. Chapter 3

The survivor is an elf. The tattoo on her face marks her as Dalish, though it is smaller than most of the _vallaslin_ Leliana has seen. (She doesn't recognise which of the Dalish gods it's supposed to honour: the tree-branching pattern of Mythal is the only one she remembers for certain, and this black tracery over one eye and down part of a cheek is not that.) She is tall for an elf, and broad-shouldered, her skin dark as Rivaini and her limbs corded with lean muscle beneath the nondescript livery of her clothes. Those muscles are drawn tight and trembling, and a feverish flush darkens her cheeks: Leliana does not need to hear her unconscious moans to recognise the signs of a woman in pain.

Her left hand is marked with the same veilfire-green as the sky, a light that twists under her skin. The skin itself -- Leliana grits her teeth and performs the examination herself by touch, since the light itself is all that is evident from visual inspection -- seems blistered, the edges around the light puffy and swollen as though from a mild burn.

She has the elf taken to a cell beneath the chantry. She never thought she would be _grateful_ to the dragon cultists, but thanks to their odd ideas about what constituted appropriate chantry architecture, Haven's chantry has for the last decade also housed the town gaol. Has her stripped, because there is no such thing as being too careful -- the elf has an impressive collection of scars, most of which are the too-familiar marks of torture, years healed, but otherwise is carrying nothing of interest -- and provided with fresh clothing, her hands fixed in restraints, and summons the apothecary. The elf _must_ live long enough to wake, to _speak_ : there are too many pressing questions and no one else to answer them.

If the elf is responsible for Dorothea's death, Leliana will make sure she dies for it. Slowly. Painfully.

But she needs to be sure the _right_ people die.

All of them.


	4. Chapter 4

The elf who comes to Haven's gate in the deepest watches of the night is a mage, with the confidence of a Keeper or a First Enchanter, for all that his face is youthful beneath his bald crown. He calls himself Solas. "I felt the Veil breach," he says, when a pair of nervous soldiers deliver him to Cassandra and Leliana in the storeroom off the chantry nave they've taken for their own. (Leliana has slept, on a bedroll spread in a corner for two hours with the buckles of her armour loosened: Cassandra has only just finished her discussions with the Tranquil and the young elf mage apprentice she's taken under her wing, and has not.) "I came to offer what aid I could. I have never been a Circle mage" -- his mouth quirks: this statement is a challenge before representatives of the Chantry, even now, and they all know it -- "but I know a great deal about the Fade, and if you accept my assistance, I may be of some use in making sure that we _all_ do not perish."

Leliana spent a year travelling in company with an apostate: she does not recall Morrigan _fondly,_ exactly, but the experience was a valuable one. "And you were nearby from pure coincidence, no doubt," she says, aware that Cassandra has fixed him with her penetrating glare -- Cassandra, who can set the lyrium in a mage's blood aflame.

He chuckles, unoffended. "No coincidence, I assure you. You might imagine the outcome of the Conclave was of more than passing interest to me, as a mage. I did not want to involve myself, but I had some curiosity as to how it all might turn out. Little did I imagine my curiosity would grant me a ringside seat for a disaster of _this_ magnitude."

Leliana has met many powerful men and women. Many powerful mages, too. There is a time for subtlety, and there is a time to be brazen and direct. "You expect us to trust you?" she asks, and makes her voice as incredulous as she knows how.

"Not in the least." His shrug is catlike disdain. "I expect you to turn me away. Or perhaps to try to imprison me. We are only facing, after all, the possibility of the end of the world, a world I too must live in. That is _hardly_ enough for a human to think an elf might offer aid freely."

Leliana bites her tongue. That stings, as much or more than he means it to. (She has watched the snubs that even a hero who is also an elf must suffer, and for all her influence been powerless to shield Kallian from them.) An objective assessment of the circumstances tells her it is more than likely his intentions match his words: what _further_ harm could one mage do, than has already been done? And they are out of options, for the only mages to remain in Haven are frightened apprentices with less idea of how to solve their problems than Roderick Asignon. And his face... she is used to reading people. His confidence is not feigned, but under it lies impatience and very real concern. "Cassandra?"

"You believe we should trust him?"

"I believe," Leliana said, painfully aware that the exhaustion gritting Cassandra's voice is a stone's throw from angry despair, "that he came to us with no guarantee of his own safety. I believe that you have no more idea of how to close the breach than I do. So yes, I think we should trust him. Tell me what we have to _lose_ by doing so?"

"I see your point." Cassandra's glare could cut steel. "Come," she says to Solas. "You should see the survivor, and then we shall see what _assistance_ you may be. Do not make me regret this."


	5. Chapter 5

Too little sleep, caught in snatches while awaiting greater disasters. Varric has attached himself to the new-come mage during the night, wry and watchful and sardonic. Leliana detects Josephine's hand in that pairing, and in Cassandra's silence when Varric turns up at their councils: Varric is not one of them, exactly, but he is a canny, cunning man whose loyalties are firm as adamant, and none of them are _entirely_ willing to take Solas on trust.

Leliana's eyes are grit and her mouth is sour when Solas explains his _theory_ , that the mark on the prisoner's hand is linked somehow to the Breach -- it has become a proper noun overnight, _the Breach_ \-- and that, if they are very fortunate, it may be possible to use it to close that gaping hole. Theoretically possible: they should have to test it on the smaller rifts before he would be willing to hazard any more definite statement.

"Much depends on the nature of the Fade energy in her hand, and how it will react to the raw Fade in the rifts. Whether it will react to her will, or to a mage's." He frowns, here. "That mark grows as the Breach does, and the effects on her body are deleterious, to say the least. I believe I have been able to stop it from killing her, at least for now. But I am no healer: I would risk killing her myself were I to try to restore her to consciousness before her body has had some time to recover from the shocks it has suffered. She may regain awareness naturally in another day, as long as the apothecary continues to get fluids and sustenance into her. If much more time than that passes, I would say that I should take the risk."

Everything is risk, and only the slenderest of hopes. Leliana fingers the knife sheathed at her left hip, and tries to feel again the faith that burned in her only days before: the Maker's hand on her heart, the bone-deep trust that she did what she did for a vision worth fulfilling --

She is scoured empty and hollow, and all she feels is bitter grief and mockery. _You thought you were chosen, once. Does that delusion comfort you now?_

Her grief follows her to the forward camp, where the icy bite in the air is still warmer than the chill in her heart. She is no great captain, no war leader, but if she has learned anything of Cullen it is that he, like Cassandra, will go without sleep far longer than is sane, when responsibility lies heavy in his hands. His junior officers are nearly all too young: without the hard-won experience of survival, they will get more of their (too few) troops killed without Cullen's steadying hand. But Leliana has experience enough with the dire necessities of war to take his place for a handful of hours, long enough for him to sleep behind the barricades and wake refreshed.

She knows her limitations. She has been the Left Hand too long to inspire much beyond fear in these young men and women, and she is no imposing warrior like Cassandra -- her skills lie more in the speed and agility that have diminished with the years but not left her yet -- to offer inexperienced soldiers comfort with her sheer martial presence. But she knows the rhythms of a battlefield in all its confusion and chaos and blood, knows when to reinforce and when to hold and when to pull back, and under her hand Cullen's ragged companies do not, at least, grow much more ragged in the face of the increasing number of demons coming from the rifts and falling from the Breach into the valley.

The only strategy they have is containment, for now. It is not a strategy they can sustain for long: Cullen estimates a week, before their casualties are too great to hold the line at the valley's edge.

Leliana suspects him of unwarranted optimism.

The Breach grows, slowly but steadily, swelling with every sick green flare. Cassandra comes in the afternoon, leading those volunteer reinforcements whose skills she is willing to vouch for. Varric and Solas, apparently, have volunteered to join those keeping watch on the rift at the mountain path that has, as yet, failed to disgorge more than a handful of very minor demons. Solas has some _theories_ he desires to put to the test, the Right Hand tells her with more than her characteristic impatience. The rising anger of her frustrated grief is burning in her blood with the need to _act_.

It is dusk when Leliana returns to Haven, leaving Cassandra to add her considerable weight to Cullen's efforts during the dark watches of the night. For night is when they are at the greatest disadvantage.

Leliana, too, would remain, but she feels her weariness like the weight of irons. And she must make sure that all still goes well with Josie, make sure that Roderick Asignon's bluster does not upset what fragile equilibrium they are managing to preserve.


	6. Chapter 6

It would be simpler all around if she could stick a knife in Roderick and have done, but he accosts her in the centre of the chantry. There are _witnesses._ She does not want to admit that part of her is restrained only by Josephine's quiet and calming presence, by the awareness of other watching eyes: she must be cold and pragmatic and calculating, with all the hard-won wisdom of her thirty-six years.

But the day's fighting has edged her nerves with fire, and she has less control of her temper than she pretends. And so when he shouts in her face of the _creature_ she is preserving from a rightful execution, of the _immediate need_ to set out for Val Royeaux for the naming of a new Divine, she takes his wrist with the gentleness of a lover. Says, soft, very soft, "You know I was Most Holy's assassin as well as her spymaster at need, yes, Chancellor?" All threat under velvet. "I would advise you not to try my patience tonight. Before you pronounce on what we _must_ do and where we _must_ go, perhaps you should see what we do now in the Valley of the Ashes with your own eyes."

Give him credit, Roderick is neither a coward nor a fool, for all that he might at times imitate the latter. He steps back and touches his wrist where her fingers had rested on his pulse. "Very well. You have a point. I will do that, come the morning." Gives her a grim and searching look. "But, Sister Leliana, let me remind you that in Justinia's... absence, your authority has limits. I would advise _you_ not to overstep them."

 _My authority..._ She thinks of her agents. Of the gold in chests in the cellars, chests whose keys are held jointly by the Left and Right Hands. The accounts under various aliases in banks in Denerim and Val Royeaux and Ostwick, the properties whose incomes were established for the work of the Left Hand, of which now of all living only she knows the full details. Of the friends she has in various places both high and low. Of Cullen, who considers Cassandra his commander, at least for now, and of the troops whose allegiance is to the idea of a better world, or to their paymaster. Of the knife at her belt and her ability -- and willingness -- to use it.

She is a very dangerous, very powerful woman in her own right. And she owes it to Dorothea's memory to use that power to serve Dorothea's vision _of_ that better world, not her own vengeful _whim_.

_You failed her, Leliana, and now she is dead. Will you fail her in her death, as well?_

It is a cutting thought. But it is enough to allow her to walk away from Roderick.

Enough to allow her to leave the knife in its sheathe.


	7. Chapter 7

It is a cold supper in Josephine's chambers, bread and meat and root vegetables gone soggy-chill on a table beside Josie's detailed notes of politics and problems and the security of their food supply. The flickering light of the smoky oil lantern sends mask-like shadows across Josephine's refined Antivan features, but it's not enough of a mask to conceal their strain from one raised in Orlais and trained to secrets. "It's unfortunate," Josephine says, "that the lower chambers of the Temple stored much of the food that was to have supplied the Conclave. Had it been here in Haven, we would be assured of _months_ of surplus. As it is, if we make it through the next few days, we face the prospect of shortages long before summer."

Unsaid, what both of them know: the mage-templar conflict disrupted the harvest of 9:40 Dragon across the south, a problem worsened in Orlais by the Halamshiral uprising and the not-quite-open civil war between Celene and Duc Gaspard. Grain prices are higher than they have been in ten years, at their worst since the disruptions and hoarding of the Blight year -- and Thedas was fortunate, then, that the Blight affected only Ferelden's harvest. Another year without an abatement of the war, or even a year where the last frosts come late, or summer is too hot, or late-summer storms ruin the crop in the fields before the grain harvest is gathered in, and the south will face general famine and all the ills that come in hunger's wake.

That problem seems distant at present, beside the immediate difficulty of the Breach, but they have the needs of a small army to consider -- some thousand troops and recruits who must be fed and must be paid, to say nothing of Haven village and the dozens of Chantry personnel trapped here until the road down the mountain should prove less demonically hazardous, or until _someone_ can find enough soldiers to offer them safe escort. "Then it is fortunate, is it not, that the Chantry is Haven's landlord. And owns the mill." Leliana sighs, considering. _Left_ Hand of the Divine is a far less _official_ position than the Right. Her name and seal will not suffice for the matter in front of them. But the Right Hand has a number of titles in the Chantry besides that first and greatest, and at least one of them could stretch to answer this. "I will get Cassandra to sign a writ. If we start rationing now, perhaps we may avoiding growing too desperate later." If there is a later. But it is no good thinking that way. _Act as if it matters, Leliana._

"Speaking of Lady Pentaghast..." Josephine's fingers fret at the end of her quill. She doesn't meet Leliana's eyes. "Did she tell you what happened this morning, after you left?"

 _There was some trouble in the village over the prisoner. I settled it._ A sentence in passing, as they held council with Cullen. Leliana took Cassandra at her word, for at the forward camp there were other things to concern them -- and she trusts Cassandra's competence and her honour implicitly. But if Josie feels the need to discuss it with her... "Not exactly," she admits, and waits for Josephine's twitchiness to settle back into ambassadorial calm.

The calm Leliana is waiting for fails to descend.

"There was an... incident." Josephine is staring at the tabletop. At her hands, turning the quill over and over between them, heedless of the drying ink on its nib. "Sister Hilda, with two others, confronted Adan outside his home, when he returned from tending the elf overnight. He escaped them -- hid in the tavern -- or they would have beaten him badly, maybe killed him. They were angry that he was tending "the elf who killed the Divine." When they lost him, they came to the chantry. There were about a dozen of them by then. They tried to force their way into the cells, demanding that the prisoner be turned over to them for summary," her mouth twists, "justice. Had Cassandra not been here, I do not think I could have talked them down."

Leliana says nothing. This is her fault: she should have left more of her people -- people she can be sure of -- to keep the prisoner secure, not sent them to scout the mountain paths around the Valley of the Ashes. Sister Hilda is a familiar name, one of the youngest of the hardline opposition to Justinia's reforming moves. Influential beyond her rank, with one aunt a Grand Cleric -- until the Conclave -- and another a Revered Mother, an uncle who attained the rank of Knight-Captain in the templars, and one great-aunt who had been among the women tipped to succeed Beatrix, these seven years gone. Her family owns most of Starkhaven: old nobility, by Free Marcher standards. Leliana should have kept closer _watch_ \--

And then she thinks on what Josephine has said, and what she hasn't, and looks up into Lady Montilyet's warm worried brown eyes. "Did you _want_ to talk them down, Josie?" she asks, very quietly.

Josephine doesn't answer at once. Instead, she says, "Lady Pentaghast told Sister Hilda that as the sister hadn't thought much of the Divine in life, her grief and outrage appeared rather hypocritical now, and that she would be well advised to hold her silence. It will cause problems, I think, to let her remain... but I have no authority here, Leliana, save what I have in respect of my former status in Orlais, and in your and Lady Pentaghast's shadow. You asked me to be ambassador for a new Inquisition, but it does not exist, and now may never. Did I want to prevent them from committing murder? How can you even ask that? Guilty or innocent, the woman at least deserves a _trial_ , Leliana! But I had _no authority_ to act, or to give orders, or _anything!_ " Josephine draws a breath, and visibly controls her distress -- anger and frustration and the fear that lives with them all, under that green shadow in the sky. There is a tremor in her hands.

Leliana wishes she could find some words of comfort or reassurance, some promise that she can make things right, but she is hollow and aching and it is all she can do to hold her bitterness in her chest, to keep her despair private. All comfort has been scoured out of her. "I am sorry," she says, and means it. It is all she can offer. "I will leave some of my people at your disposal, and let them know you speak with _my_ authority, at least. We are in such disarray, Josephine, I scarcely know what I _don't_ know, right now. Since Justinia..." and she shuts her teeth, because _by the Black City's rotten heart_ , she is the Left Hand, and it is her fault that this was not prevented, and she does not _deserve_ to weep.

Josephine massages the crease between her eyebrows, tiredly. After a moment, she asks, softly, "Do you think she did it, Leliana? The elf. Caused the Breach. Killed the Divine?"

Leliana allows herself to consider the question, to give it its full weight. Her heart cries out for the satisfaction of a simple vengeance, but she has dealt in secrets and betrayals for full twenty years, and this problem has occupied the back of her mind for the last day. "She is Dalish, by her tattoo." She chooses her words carefully, knowing that she can trust Josie to pick up on the nuances. "It is rare for the Dalish -- any Dalish -- to involve themselves in human politics. It may be she is outcast from them, or a mercenary, or acting on some particular grudge, but if she _was_ involved in some way, the most probable scenario is that she was working under someone else's orders. She may not have even known what it was she was to be part of, if she was someone else's tool." Leliana knows intimately what it is to be betrayed in such a manner, but she cannot afford sympathy for a stranger, unless it will serve her as a weapon. Too much is at stake. She has _lost_ too much. "It is also possible, though it seems unlikely, that she is entirely innocent. That her survival is the product of chance, and that anyone else who made their way out of a rift would have been similarly marked." She lifts one shoulder, half a shrug. "We'll find out when she wakes, Josie. One way or another."

"'One way or another,'" Josephine echoes. Her regard is dark and steady, and not in the least approving. _Disappointed_ , that is the look: and for an instant almost Leliana wants to explain, wants Josie to know she doesn't mean, has never meant _torture_ \--

 _But only because torture is quite useless when it comes to finding out the truth_. Were it otherwise, she would not scruple at knives and hot irons. She is the Left Hand, with all that goes with it, and Josephine knows, should know, that nothing Leliana does is ever exactly _clean._ She has earned that disapproval, many times over, and if it cuts it is no more than she deserves.

"I want to see her," Josephine says, abruptly, with the stubborn set to her jaw that means she will bend all her considerable powers to achieving her end, and doesn't care if Leliana knows it. "The elf. I have not your skills, Leliana, but I have some knowledge of the Dalish. It may be that I will see something that you have missed."

That is true. Leliana must acknowledge it, though she nurses a suspicion that Josephine means to take their treatment of the elf up as a cause -- Josephine's ideals are as much a part of her as her charisma and intelligence. But that's not sufficient reason to refuse her, and so, with some misgivings, she agrees.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Josephine is a little critical of Leliana.

The cells smell of rust and urine, shit and rotted straw. Leliana has never quite managed to overcome her atavistic flinch at the odour of dungeons, though she controls it well: there are perhaps only three people in the world who would recognise the tension in her jaw for what it is, when the door to the cellar stair shuts behind her.

Josephine's features betray her controlled distaste. This is not her milieu, Leliana knows: Josie is a creature of ballrooms and receiving rooms, coffeehouses and opera boxes, salons and merchants' offices. Even her youthful flirtation with the bardic trade had been a relatively refined thing, a thing to make the ugly reality of murder at its heart come as a disillusioning shock.

As for Leliana... well, she has grown used to ugliness, to the stickiness of blood drying on her hands. Marjolaine and the Blight between them killed the last of her innocence, and in her bones she understands the motto that Kallian quoted to her first so long ago. _Vigilance, sacrifice, victory._

She was not vigilant enough, and she will sacrifice _anything_ if it means she will not fail again. She _must not_ fail Justinia's memory as she failed Justinia herself.

"We're going in, Maric," she says to the young man on watch at the iron-barred door to the survivor's cell.

"Yes, ser." He unbolts the door, holds it open for them. Protocol and precedence would have Leliana give way to Josephine -- Left Hand of the Divine is only a semi-official title, Antivan nobility outranks a mere Chantry lay sister, and Leliana is normally very careful to observe the proprieties -- but this is war, and so she steps through first with one hand on her knife.

The two guards inside the cell -- Philippe, a former Free Marcher templar recruit, and Marian, a Fereldan elf who came to Leliana recommended by Kallian's Denerim cousins -- nod to her carefully. "News?" she says, eyeing the Rivaini-dark Dalish who lies unmoving on a pallet against the far wall, hand still glowing.

Philippe shrugs. "Adan's got water and broth into her. He's coming back later to try to get more. She don't move much, except to twitch and whimper when the mark on her hand glows stronger, and we've had no outside trouble since the Lady Seeker gave the hotheads a proper bollocking." He hesitates. "You think she done it, serah? You said we're to treat her as if she's proper dangerous, like."

"I think," Leliana says firmly, "that we take no chances." She steps clear of the doorway, allowing Josephine -- breathing close down her neck -- to enter.

Josephine holds the skirts of her green-and-russet gown clear of the grimy stone floor. The torchlight shadows her features, but her disapproval is plain when she says, over her shoulder, "She is still unconscious, and you have her in chains?"

"Lady Montilyet." Leliana cannot keep the edge from her voice. Josephine knows better than to tell the Left Hand her business. And Leliana knows, she _knows_ that Josephine's criticism comes from both her native compassion and anger at her own earlier helplessness. But Josie is not so naive as to really believe they should take foolish chances...

"Sister Nightingale," Josephine returns, cool and ambassadorial, and crouches beside the pallet. Leliana comes to stand by her shoulder. From this angle, she cannot see Josie's face, but she's close enough that if anything happens -- she carefully does not define that _anything_ , even in the most private reaches of her mind -- she will be able to keep Josie safe.

Josephine is quiet for a long moment. "I know I should try to be objective," she says at last, softly. "But were it not for the ears, she would look like one of my sisters." She sighs and settles back on her heels. "Did she carry anything that might identify where she's from?"

"Nothing. From her clothes, one might have thought her an elf of the cities. But there is the _vallaslin_."

"The infamous blood writing," Josie says, wry. "One of my tutors was much taken with the romance of the 'savage Dalish' -- but she was a scholar for all that. I think this is the mark of Sylaise, or one of them. Protector of the hearth, and the elven healing goddess, if I remember correctly? If she chose to follow Sylaise, from what I have been told, she would most likely have seen herself as a protector of her clan. A defender, first and foremost. At least at the time when she chose which symbol to take."

"Interesting," Leliana murmurs. Possibly _useful,_ too, when the woman wakes: it is always better to know more than your opponent suspects.

Josephine sighs again. "And if she is innocent, in the end, Sister Nightingale?" A rebuke in that question, as she stood in a rustle of skirts. "She can hardly look forward to a fair hearing."

 _Does it matter?_ Perhaps it ought to, but she cannot believe it as once she might have done. But if Leliana says that, Josie will look at her as though she is a stranger. So instead she says, gesturing Josie to the door, "That is the future, Lady Montilyet. Let us worry about tonight and tomorrow first, yes?"

For there is work yet to do, before the morning.


	9. Chapter 9

It is another cold night. More snow falls, though the clouds are not thick enough to obscure the sight of the Breach. The sick light from the sky turns darkness into perpetual twilight. It drowns out the stars. Leliana sleeps uneasily, her rest troubled by nightmares as it has not been in years. She has not undressed, has compromised only so far as to remove her armour: her travels during the Blight taught her how to roll from sleep into armour in minutes, though that has its own risks in buckles left undone, but she has never been able to sleep _well_ in the press of leather and metal and cured dragonskin, however well it fits for battle.

Not that she is sleeping well tonight anyway.

In long stretches of wakefulness -- she must rest, she knows, she cannot afford to have her judgement distorted by fatigue -- she lies on her bedroll and tries to plan for the future, tries to think out the steps of what must happen if they live beyond the next few days. But any solid idea dissolves into mist and the tears she refuses, _refuses,_ to shed. She does not deserve to grieve Justinia. She should have been able to _save_ the Divine. It was her duty.

In the coldest reaches of the night, a quiet knock sounds at her door. Leliana comes out of her latest nightmare reaching for weapons, dry-mouthed with a tangle of old terrors: Kallian become a broodmother, Marjolaine wearing Dorothea's face, her own skin rotting with darkspawn taint. The knife in her hand is there without thought, her body moving with an assassin's instinct even as her mind sluggishly strives to slough off the unreality of dreams --

At the last instant, recognition dawns. Leliana diverts her blow so her knife slashes harmlessly through air. Josephine's face is a study in startlement in the brazier's weak glow. She is dressed for bed, thick fur robes bunched around her shoulders, one hand still resting on the door she has drawn open and half-closed behind her. "Leliana...?" she ventures, unwontedly uncertain.

"Nightmares, Josie." The remnants of them a thick, cloying sickness in the back of her throat, the knowledge that her _weakness_ brought her a hand's breadth from destroying one of the few honestly _good_ people left in her life. Josie, who despite the necessities of politics and the difficulties of their respective positions in Val Royeaux, has only ever been her friend. She will not shake. Josephine should not know how close it truly _was._ "I'm sorry for frightening you. I did not expect..."

"The door was unlocked," Josephine says, rueful, and closes it the rest of the way. "But I should know better than to enter uninvited. It was only..."

It is moments like this that remind Leliana, strongly, that Josephine came young to her responsibilities. For all her experience with the Game, for all her utter competence, she is still years shy of thirty. It was family connections and her own innate genius that brought her to the position of Ambassador to Orlais by her twentieth birthday, and though Josephine would likely be horrified to hear it, there are times when Leliana can't help but see the other woman as a surrogate little sister, someone who needs protection as much as friendship. "Only what?" she says, when the silence stretches, and sheathes her knife at the small of her back. Maker help them, if it is another disaster... "Has something happened?"

"No, thank Andraste." Josephine bites her lip. "I couldn't sleep," she confesses quietly. "I shouldn't have come, but... we are friends, aren't we? And I... oh, Maker. It's embarrassing. I didn't want to lie alone all night."

They have been lovers, once or twice over the years: though Josephine is not casual with her body, and Leliana's heart belongs to her Warden, there are times when every mortal needs another's touch. (And Kallian has never asked for physical fidelity, though Leliana has wanted to offer it. _Should I deprive you of comfort, or a weapon in the Game, for jealousy's sake?_ her beloved said, when Leliana revealed that joining Justinia's service would keep them apart for months on end. _I love you. That means I want your happiness._ )

But she knows, here, that sex is not what Josephine is asking for, in her roundabout way. Just not to be alone with her fears. Her heart contracts in her chest -- flinches -- at the thought of being a source of comfort. She is too hard, too ruthless, too _broken_ to offer it, but Josephine can hardly show uncertainty in front of the secretaries and servants, can hardly ask anyone _else_ to hold her in the night. It is Josephine's _trust_ that undoes her, sharp as razors, cruel as salt after the lash.

Josie looks at her like a lost puppy, wounded and alone, and Leliana finds herself enfolding the other woman in her arms.

Josephine smells like lavender oil and woodsmoke, camphor and damp fur and the faint undertone of sweat. Leliana feels _relief_ in the way the younger woman leans into her, in how fiercely her arms tighten around Leliana's shoulders -- pressing on all the scarred places, holding too tight, too desperately. "Here, Josie," Leliana says, quietly, and tries for Josephine's sake to be a little less hard. "You can stay here, if you like. Though I cannot offer you a soft bed."

"Please," Josephine says, a sound entirely too much like a sob.

Leliana guides her to the bedroll. Lies down beside her, curling into her warmth under the blankets. This is familiar, too familiar: a narrow pallet and scratchy wool, a woman in her arms who nestles against her with perfect trust and the whole world on the brink of ruin, and she wishes with the painful intensity of grief that it is _Kallian_ in her arms instead of Josephine, Kallian, whose strength could hold _her_ up, whose compassion and determination could make _sense_ of this vast cold angry dread coiled behind her breastbone, who could say with the weary ruefulness of the utterly irreligious, _Sometimes there's no point looking for a reason. What can't be changed must be carried, no matter the why of it. So you go on, and maybe one day the burden gets lighter. But most of the time_ why _just gives you another weight._

Over the years, that irreligious certainty has at times unnerved Leliana. Now she wishes she could share it, for the thought that _anything_ of the last few days is _the Maker's will_ leaves her shaking with grief and rage and dread and _refusal_ and she knows not what else.

 _Carry it, Leliana,_ she tells herself. She will, because she must.

Josephine sighs against her, the hitch of her breathing softening out into sleep. At least Josie will have the respite of unconsciousness, even if Leliana must lie wakeful.

But it's easier to relax with another person beside her, as though the animal warmth of human contact is a talisman against nightmares. It turns out she won't lie wakeful after all.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leliana really wants some good news.
> 
>  _Really_ wants some.
> 
> ...she's got Cassandra and a prisoner instead.

Cassandra returns with the morning, worn to a desperate angry edge. Leliana has no good news to give her. At least one squad of her scouts have disappeared into thin air, and a bird has come from Ferelden's Bannorn, with news of demon-spawning rifts and renewed mage-templar conflict. Redcliffe is the next best thing to besieged. The road down the mountain remains almost as dangerous as the pass from Haven to the Valley of the Ashes. If Cullen's troops can't contain the demons soon -- an unlikely prospect at best -- any evacuation will most likely result in bloody ruin.

A messenger from Solas came during the night: the elven mage is more confident than ever that if there is to be any hope for closing the Breach, it lies with their survivor and the mysterious mark on her hand. Leliana finds herself debating his honesty and his motives in her spare moments, but what she told Cassandra remains true. Their straits are such that they have little choice but to trust him.

She shares what little news they have after Cassandra has snatched a bare three hours' sleep. The other woman straddles the bench beside Leliana's worktable with less than her usual grace. The chill wind ruffles her hair, and a fresh bruise is blossoming on her cheek below her scar. Leliana frowns to see it: without Cassandra --

 _Without Cassandra, we are lost. Without Cassandra,_ I _am lost_.

She and the Seeker are very different people. They disagree more often than they agree, and she thinks Cassandra will never, quite, reconcile her straightforward heart to the twisty moves and moral compromises that Leliana makes in the dark -- that Leliana _must_ make, for the world is hard and cruel and full of monsters, and she is one of them, and she will never be worthy of the grace Justinia offered her, to help make the world a better place, but she _will_ see Justinia's vision through. But Leliana loves few people, and trusts fewer, and she knows with the hard-won knowledge of years that Cassandra is a rock on which she can rely: worthy of her trust, for Cassandra will always be _Cassandra_ , in all her stubborn infuriating righteousness.

She needs that certainty. As long as she has it, she can be the Left Hand that they need, cold and precise and ruthlessly practical. She can swallow her own grief and fight to preserve what remains of Justinia's vision. But if she loses Cassandra now, she understands with cold self-knowledge that it will unbalance her entirely. She cannot take another blow, not now. Not yet.

She needs Cassandra's strength as well as Cassandra's authority. She needs Cassandra's _faith_. Her own is not enough to carry them all through

"Well," Cassandra says, flatly, when Leliana comes to the end of the news and has broached Josephine's concerns over the food supply. "If this is doom upon the world, we, at least, will go down fighting." The crooked twist of her lips isn't a smile.

"Cold comfort," Leliana says, chilled by more than the breeze.

"It is comfort enough for me. We are not yet dead." Cassandra's shrug makes the leather of her armour creak. "Have Lady Montilyet prepare whatever decrees she needs my authority for. I still have a writ granting me licence to command the resources of the Chantry in the Chantry's defence, as commander of her bodyguard or whatever title it was that Justinia hung on me last year, before we went to Kirkwall." The mask of Cassandra's calm cracks, raw grief and anger suddenly, raggedly, visible in her expression before she clenches her jaw and turns her head to hide her face. When she looks up again, her composure is once more in place, though strained. "That will be sufficient, will it not?"

Leliana nods. Words stick in her throat: Cassandra's grief is a challenge to her own control. (They are alone. There is no help coming. Justinia is _dead_ and the world is _broken_ and she _should have prevented this_.) But she is Sister Nightingale, the Divine's Left Hand, and she must be as cold as ice, as calm as a windless day, as precise as a surgeon. She cannot afford to break down.

Not now. Not ever.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches sight of a runner approaching. Cassandra sees the girl in almost the same instant: the Seeker's shoulders tighten, and Leliana can see the thought cross her face: _Not_ more _bad news?_

The runner is one of Leliana's, a slender elf not yet out of adolescence but with a knack for quiet watchfulness that drew Leliana's attention early. She has been employing that talent outside the survivor's cell, and Leliana is suddenly cold despite her winter layers beneath her armour. "Sister Nightingale," the girl says, drawing up with half an abbreviated salute, "The prisoner's awake."

Cassandra hisses like a dragon roused from slumber, and  Leliana hides her sudden treacherous jolt of hope.

 

* * *

 

There are things that must be settled, before they question the survivor. Logistics, yes, but also strategy. There is an art to interrogation. But they do not have _time_ to be subtle _._

Cassandra has been a Seeker of Truth as long as Leliana has been a spy. Perhaps longer. They each have their own talents, and they have long since learned to work together -- though that was an awkward process, in the early days.

Leliana is all chill calculation, when they must interrogate a prisoner. She can play many roles, and has. But Cassandra is fire and fury and righteous wrath. Though the Seeker _can_ manage quiet sympathy when she must. They need Cassandra now, Cassandra with her bluntness and her fire -- Cassandra, brusque and impatient and straightforward as she is, Cassandra with one of the keenest intelligences Leliana has ever met.

"If she is guilty," Cassandra says abruptly, in the passage outside the cell, staring straight ahead and ignoring the guard by the cell door. "If she is guilty, Leliana, _I_ will kill her. Not you."

Regardless of the survivor's guilt, they cannot kill the elf. Not yet. Not until the Breach is dealt with. "If Solas is right, we need her. For a time, at least." And Leliana does not want that to be true -- she wants a simple answer, she wants justice, she wants _vengeance_ \-- but these things are more a luxury even than her grief. The world does not care what she wants, and this will be far from the first time she has had to set her feelings aside.

It will not even be the hardest time.

Cassandra fingers the hilt of one of the knives at her belt. Her smile is thin. "I know. And I know I _want_ her to be guilty. But that does not mean she is not." She snorts. "Do not worry, Leliana. There must be a trial. I can hold myself in check until then."

"Be sure that you do," Leliana says.

She doesn't want to doubt Cassandra. Still, she doesn't like the light in the other woman's eyes. But there is no more time for talk: the scene is set, and they each have their parts to play.

She only hopes it will be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much delayed, but here is a tiny conclusion, at last.


End file.
